Signaling-mediated meiotic recombination in plants

•Meiotic recombination requires the assembly of meiotic protein complexes in time and space.•Post-translational modifications control meiotic recombination process and activity.•Protein complex formation and modifications link meiotic recombination steps to chromosome structural changes of axial elements and synaptonemal complex.•In plants, ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like protein-mediated signaling regulates meiotic crossover formation in a dosage-dependent manner. Meiotic recombination provides genetic diversity in populations and ensures accurate homologous chromosome segregation for genome integrity. During meiosis, recombination processes, from DNA double strand breaks (DSBs) to crossover formation are tightly linked to higher order chromosome structure, including chromatid cohesion, axial element formation, homolog pairing and synapsis. The extensive studies on plant meiosis have revealed the important conserved roles for meiotic proteins in homologous recombination. Recent works have focused on elucidating the mechanistic basis of how meiotic proteins regulate recombination events via protein complex formation and modifications such as phosphorylation, ubiquitination, and SUMOylation. Here, we highlight recent advances on the signaling and modifications of meiotic proteins that mediate the formation of DSBs and crossovers in plants.